I Doubt Anyone Attending SXSW Interactive Will Be Asking "Where Are All the Women Bloggers?"

Lisa Stone's got the skinny. I'll be in Austin next week for the festivities work-related stuff. If you'll be around, drop me a line. If I have time, we'll hook up.

Comments

[Anon]

Will that sinester guy with the videocam be there again? I hate to think what he's doing right now with those interviews with the young girls he taped at the last BlogHer. James Spader!

[The Fat Lady Sings]

Wonderful graphics - now that's a poster I'd love to have! Have fun and be safe.

[Sour Duck]

Media Girl has a good analysis of the cover, fyi. (http://mediagirl.org/node/1170)

[Roxanne]

I've got a conflict of interest with the cover subject. So I'm going to stay out of it. If others want to discuss it here, feel free.

[Linkmeister]

You gotta give it this: it does what it's supposed to do, which is grab the casual viewer's attention.

[Lisa Stone]

Hi Rox, I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

Couple of comments on the cover: I can see and respect mediagirl's point of view. As for myself, this cover instantly reminded me of Blogger Tild's fantastic She-Blogger posters that many women embraced, promoted and bought last spring when we were all planning BlogHer together. (Hat-tip: I originally saw the link to Tild's art on Shelley Powers' blog here.) One She-Blogger image is of a curvy, sexy vixen in her blue jeans, but the others are relatively unclothed, very campy and pulp-fictiony. Love 'em. I have no idea whether these images were an inspiration for the Austin Chronicle, but their cover is showing less skin than some of the art from the women's community online.

My two lira? I:

- Think that in the fabulous tradition of B--grade sci-fi sexsploitation, it's too bad that a couple of the women on the cover were not black, brown, and/or Andorian;

- Strongly recommend everyone read the terrific, up-front interviews of women speaking at SXSW that are inside this issue. The Chron walked their talk: They gave many women ink and the opportunity speak for themselves, rather than patronizing, snarky write-ups. If you want to read the links, see Roxanne's link to my piece above or the BlogHer write-up;

- I hate giving interviews. Hard for this reporter to trust other reporters. But I'm glad I talked with Marritt Ingman. She spent more time and did a better job of getting to the core of what we were trying to say about women and identity than anyone else who has yet interviewed me, Elisa and Jory.

- Truth be told, I have never worn a red evening gown to conquer a planet. I prefer Starbuck's get-up. But BlogHer's omnipartisan -- lipstick, lace, workboots and/or coveralls, all are welcome. Ya'll wear what you want. We'll still listen to you.

[Lisa Stone]

P.S. I think your headline would be correct even without the Chron's write-up. SXSW's Hugh Forrest has worked hard to get women speakers, including their outreach to BlogHer to produce five panels for them. The speaker count of women is more than 100 out of 300 total. That's better than any other interactive large conference I'm aware of, other than BlogHer itself. And, btw, this point isn't whuffie - our work there is volunteer.

[Elke Sisco]

I'll be there! Hope I get to meet you.

[media girl]

Some further thoughts:

One of the battles in gaining distribution for media content -- movies, books, etc. -- is that you typically cannot control the packaging, the marketing, how the work is positioned. It's very rare indeed for anyone who creates content to control how it's packaged. Blogs are one of the few exceptions these days.

Look at the movie industry, for example. Most important is how the movie is positioned by its marketing. What's the poster like? The trailer? The television spots? What the movie actually is becomes a secondary experience that changes the first impression. Whether the movie overcomes that or not really depends upon how powerful the movie is -- and how pernicious and powerful the marketing itself is.

I have not seen more than one or two of the Oscar nominated films (for all the categories) this year, but I have pretty clear impressions of what each of them is like, is about, and sends as a message. Why? Because of the marketing, the packaging -- how the movies have been presented to the marketplace.

So in this case about the Austin Chronicle cover, my argument is not with Marritt Ingman, but with the editors/publisher who decided to package the article with this imagery. The article becomes the second thing, if not secondary in itself, to the cover and how that artwork positions the BlogHer phenomenon.

Matsu's post on this is very good, btw.

[Ann Bartow]

Tild posters are overtly satirical, and not used to frame a legitimate news article that is otherwise the cause for celebration. It reminds me of the time when a great female attorney I worked with was excited because a case we were handling got front page coverage in a major newspaper, only to read the first few paragraphs with great dismay, because they focused almost exclusively on her clothers and shoes. Liberal paper, woman reporter, same sort of sexist crap.

[Amanda Marcotte]

Does this mean we have to make norbizness wear a dress Friday night?

[Tild]

Wow, that's some nice photoshoppin'.

I heard my name being invoked, and even tho I'm officially on hiatus, I thought in case some readers would like to see the She-Blogger pictures I've been doing for the past year or two, I'd helpfully put up a post with links to all of them. Come look; see what ya think:

She-Blogger Redux: A Tildified Retrospective

[eli]

any chance this cover is mocking certain attitudes about women? and about women as bloggers?